


You stay.

by owlinaminor



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Depression, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2563277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“One night, I decided I was going to end it all. I sneaked out the house and went to the late night chemist. The fella on the counter point blank refused to serve me. So I burst into tears right there in the shop. He was so kind, this fella –  even though he wouldn’t serve me, he took me in the back, made me a tea, and listened. And I talked. All through his shift, and then some more when he walked me home. I talked and he listened, and he didn’t yawn or look at his watch or anything, he just was there for me. And he made me laugh, too. That’s something you don’t know about your Dad, he’s very funny when he wants to be.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	You stay.

**Author's Note:**

> the scene in which Sue finds Kieren in the cave is one of my favorites in the whole series. I loved her character from when she first appeared in the show, but that scene really gave her more depth. and it strengthened her relationship with Kieren, and drew parallels between the two of them, but mostly - mostly, it made me love her (and Steve) even more. so, I extrapolated a little bit from that scene and wrote this.
> 
> (also, one small note: as a clueless American, I have no idea if primary schools in England actually make kids do the chicken dance, so I apologize if that's completely wrong.)

At approximately one o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday, the chemist shop’s store bell rings.

Steve Walker puts down his book slowly and deliberately – first finishes his paragraph, then folds the cover over his index finger, then places the book on the counter.  He leans forward and peers into the all-encompassing shadows out beyond, finds only smears of inky black for his trouble.  The bell rung.  That can’t be right.  Nobody ever comes to the late-night chemist after nine o’clock – nobody in Roarton, anyway.

And yet, this town must be testing the waters of its goth phase, or at least one of its residents is, because someone is approaching.  Whoever it is takes a few steps into the light, and Steve can make out a short, unassuming figure in a black jacket, hood pulled over its owner’s face.

He wonders, for a brief moment, if he might have fallen asleep on shift and dreamed himself up an opening to one of those horror movies Roger is always trying to get him to watch.

But then, the figure shuffles just a bit further and reaches up a hand to pull its hood off, and Steve can see that this is no ghost or ghoul.  This is only a girl.  She has dark hair twined into a messy braid and wide, brown eyes that stare about the shop as though she hasn’t seen shelves or bottles before.  She is not a ghost – she is too solid – but something about her still reminds him of one.  Something uncertain, or transient, as though the slightest push might send her into oblivion.

“Hello,” she says.  Her voice is barely audible, even in the silence that always accompanies a late hour in a small town.

“Hi,” Steve replies.  “Um, what can I do for you?”

“I’d like some Nembutal, please.”

 _Nembutal._ Nobody’s asked for that since old Mrs. McCarthy decided her Alzheimer’s was too much and went to sleep one night planning not to wake up.  Steve looks more closely at this girl – at the dark circles under her eyes, the arms crossed tightly against her chest, the sense of intransience.  A coldness settles in his gut, sharp and stinging.

“Why?” he asks.

Her eyes narrow, and her hands tighten around her arms, although she does not move.  “Why do you wanna know?”

Steve has always tried to avoid confrontation, but he’s beginning to fear he’ll be forced to make an exception.  “I’m sorry,” he says, “but I can’t sell you that unless you tell me what it’s for.”

“Can’t you?” she asks.  Her voice grows louder, higher – it’s starting to crack.

Steve shakes his head.  “Sorry, I can’t.  I just can’t.”

“You’re sure you can’t?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

And then – suddenly, unexpectedly, like the breaking of a dam in midwinter – she begins to cry.  Her crying isn’t loud or hysterical wailing – it’s silent, shaking sobs, tears running down her cheeks and staining her collar, arms raising to hide her face.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

Steve has never felt so useless in his life.  He remembers sophomore year of high school – coming home to find his little sister sobbing on the front porch, saying that she couldn’t believe how much her friends hated her, and just standing, staring, trying to speak and failing.  He remembers sitting with her as she curled up into a ball like a turtle retreating into its shell, voice broken and unintelligible.  He remembers waiting, shaking, until his mother came home.  And she had hutted and tutted, gathered with strong arms and put on a cup of tea.  She’d somehow known exactly the right words to say to convince his sister to smile again.

A cup of tea, Steve thinks.  He doesn’t know how to do embraces or kind words, but he knows how to make tea.

He takes a deep breath – _you’re a grown man, you’re studying to be a doctor, you can handle_ _this –_ and steps behind the counter.  He walks forward slowly until he’s only a pace or two away from the girl, then reaches out and pats her uncertainly on the shoulder.

She looks up at him, eyes wide and frightened – as though she’d forgotten his presence until just now.

“Um, would you – would you like to come into the back and talk about it?” he asks.  “I can put the kettle on.”

The girl nods.  This close, Steve can see that she’s shaking – moving almost imperceptibly, like a bomb about to go off.

“So you should, um, follow me, then,” he tells her.  He heads to the back room of the shop and pushes the door open with a squeak.  She follows.

The back room is small and dimly lit.  They mostly use it for storage – dingy file cabinets and shelves full of cardboard boxes labeled in hastily-scrawled black sharpie – but a couple of years ago, the employees decided to drag in a couch found in some neighbor’s garage sale and invest in an electric kettle, a water cooler, and some tea bags.  Now, it looks less like a closet and more like someone had cut out a living room and pasted it into a storage locker.

Steve points his visitor to the couch, then heads over to the kettle and fills it with water.  Once it’s toiling away, he wipes his hands on his jeans and settles down beside her.  He sits carefully, making certain there’s a decent amount of space between him and the girl.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Sue,” she replies.

“I’m Steve,” he tells her.  “Nice to meet you, Sue.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”  Sue gives him a watery smile.  She isn’t sobbing any more, but she hasn’t stopped shaking.

“Now, can you tell me what happened?”

“You mean, that I came in here and – and asked for some Nembutal, and you wouldn’t give – give it to me?”  Her voice comes in hiccups, hop-skipping from one word to the next.

“No,” Steve says, “I mean, why you wanted it.”

“And if I tell you, you – you’ll give it to me?”

He doesn’t say anything – just lets his silence hang in the air, thick and heavy.

After a moment, she starts to explain, anyway.  “All my life, I just wanted to do something good.  I know that sounds naive and dumb, but it was my goal – help people, somehow, or maybe teach.  I liked literature and I liked kids, so I figured I could go to uni to be an English teacher.  But then, my second year, I met _him._   Roger.  He was this military man, and he was so handsome, and kind, and such a gentleman.  When he asked me out to dinner, I couldn’t stop smiling for a week.  I thought he was the one – that my whole life was set.  I’d settle down with him, have a nice home, a couple of kids, the whole shebang.  I stopped studying – instead, I tried to be pretty for him, become friends with the girls in his circle, do more fashionable things.  I tried so hard.”

She’s interrupted suddenly by the sharp whistle of the kettle – the water’s boiled.  Steam erupts from its metal lid, like the breath of a dragon just waking from hibernation.

Steve stands and collects two mugs, spoons, and tea bags from the small cupboard next to the kettle.

“Sorry,” he says.  “We only have Earl Gray – haven’t gone shopping in a while – is that alright?”

“It’s fine,” Sue replies.  “Thanks.”

“Cream or sugar?  Or both?”

“No cream, two sugars, if you don’t mind.”

“No problem.”

She waits patiently as he fixes the tea, watches him with red-rimmed eyes and hesitantly tapping fingers.  When he hands her a mug, she cups her hands around it and inhales the steam.  It’s as though she’s absorbing the warmth – letting it fill her, surround her, soothe her.

Steve sits down beside her and takes a sip from his own mug.  Usually, he dumps in a ridiculous amount of cream and sugar, but this time, he decided to try it with no cream, two sugars, just like Sue.  The tea burns his tongue, and yet it has more flavor this way.  It’s more real.

“Sorry for the interruption,” he says.  “Go on.  Please.”

Sue takes a shaky breath, and continues.  “And then, of course, after we’d been together about a year, he dumped me.  Decided that my best mate Emily was more socially acceptable, and started going around with her.  And it – it killed me, it really did.  I couldn’t stand seeing them together on campus – I just wanted to stay in my room, lying in bed and counting the lines on the ceiling over and over again.  And to make matters worse, my grades were just in the toilet.  I was failing everything.”

Her voice catches, and Steve moves closer – just a little bit, enough that his thigh is barely touching hers.  He looks at her steadily, hoping she can tell that he isn’t here to judge or reproach.  He’s here to listen.

Sue closes her eyes, collects her thoughts, then goes on.  “So, I went home.  This was about a month ago now – a month of me sitting at home, doing absolutely nothing.  Me being useless.  Me not doing any good for anyone.  Me with no job, no dream, no nothing.  And I can’t change that – I’ve dropped out of school, I can’t get married, I’m just here taking up space.  I might as well –”

“Don’t say that.”

Steve’s never interrupted anyone before – never been one to call out in class or shout his opinions above his friends’ – but he can’t keep quiet, now.  He can’t let Sue keep thinking that she’s useless.  He just can’t.

She stares at him, her words abruptly shut off.  Her hands tighten around her mug, knuckles burning white, as though that lump of porcelain is the only thing keeping her in place.

“Don’t say that,” Steve repeats.  “You’re not useless.  You can still do good things for people – you don’t need a fancy uni degree or some arse who probably didn’t deserve you in the first place.”

Sue is silent for a long moment.  She looks down into her mug – she hasn’t even tried the tea, but she still seems to be searching for answers within the dark liquid.

“How?” she finally asks, her voice very quiet and very small.

Steve thinks about that, then says simply, “You stay.”  And then, when she doesn’t answer, he adds, “And try the tea.  It’s good.”

She does, and then nods in agreement – just the slightest tilt of her head, but it’s something.

“And another thing you can do,” Steve continues, feeling a bit emboldened, “is cheer up.  You look so gloomy, it’s really very depressing.”

“Are you suggesting that I can’t look gloomy if I want?”  Sue’s eyes narrow, but somehow, he doesn’t think she’s really that angry.

“No, you can,” Steve concedes, “it’s just – have you tried smiling?”

“Yes, of course I have!”

“But recently?  Like, in the past few weeks?”

“I ...”  She considers it – cocks her head and sips more tea, as though that’ll help.  “I don’t think so.”

“Well, now, that’s just sad,” Steve pronounces.  “I’m going to try and do something about that.”

“How?”

Steve adopts an exaggerated thinking pose.  He saw the Thinker in a museum in London once, and thought it was a bit dumb – nobody actually looks like that when they’re deep in thought.  But for now, for comical effect, it works just fine.  It doesn’t take long for him to come up with an idea, and once he does, he puts his tea down on the table and stands up.

“What are you doing?” Sue asks.

Steve just grins.

He thinks back to primary school – to school spirit days when the entire class had been forced to go outside in the field and perform strange dances and cheers that he always thought were more like satanic rituals than any kind of class bonding.  Most of those dances, he couldn’t do now if you aid him a million pounds, but one has stuck with him.  One ridiculous, embarrassing, outrageous dance.

Steve lifts his arms in the air, cups his hands, and opens and closes them.  Then, he folds his arms at the elbows and flaps them up and down.  After that, he twists his hips back and forth a couple of times.  And finally, he claps four times – then starts the whole process over again.

Sue’s eyes widen as she realizes what he’s doing.  The corners of her mouth twitch – he can tell she’s trying to hold back a smile.

“Why are you doing the chicken dance?” she wants to know.

Steve’s grin grows.  “To cheer you up,” he says.  “Is it working?”

He keeps going, even adding the words – as well as he remembers them, which is admittedly not all that well – to increase the ridiculousness of his spectacle.  His audience of one attempts to keep her face blank, or even sullen, but by the twelfth repetition of the dance, she’s smiling.  A few more goes, and she’s laughing.

Her face is so much more open, when she laughs.  She looks younger, less battered down by hard times and worse thoughts.  She’s lovely, Steve realizes with a jolt.

He sits back down beside her, a bit out of breath but laughing, himself.  “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Sue shakes her head at him, raising her arm to wipe at her eyes.  “What kind of idiot are you, anyway?” she manages to get out.

“I told you,” Steve replies, “I’m Steve.  Steve Walker, doctor in training.”

“Doctor in training, huh?” Sue repeats. “ And here you said I don’t need a fancy uni degree to help people?”

Steve shrugs.  “Well, some of the people I know _with_ fancy uni degrees aren’t qualified.”

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Oh, yeah.  I had this mate, Alfie, in med school – he once managed to slice an entire liver in half during a simulation.  Thank God it wasn’t a real operation, right?  And that’s not even the worst …”

Steve goes on, telling Sue all about the antics he’s seen and participated in through university, med school, and the first couple months of his residency in Roarton.  He goes for funny stories, enhancing them with silly voices and exaggerated hand gestures.  If you asked him, he probably wouldn’t admit it – that he’s trying to draw out more laughter from the strange, lovely, anything but useless girl sitting beside him.

The two of them talk through the night about everything from medical school to Romantic literature to rock music.  When the dark sky outside begins to surrender to the golden, fire-tinged sun, Steve walks with Sue back to her parents’ house on the other side of town.

He doesn’t quite reach for her hand, but it’s a close thing.

“Well, this is me,” Sue says, stopping in front of a tiny white house with green trim.  Steve stands in front of her, hands in his pockets – not ready to turn away just yet.

“Can I … Can I ask you something?” she adds, uncertain.

He nods.  “Of course.”

“Why did you decide to become a doctor?  I mean, it sounds like such hard work.”

Steve shrugs, stalling for time while he thinks.  “I wanted to help people,” he finally says.  “A lot of people are broken – not just physically, but mentally, you know?  Some people don’t know how to be happy.  And I want to do something to fix that.”

Sue looks at him for a long moment, her large, warm-chocolate eyes searching his.  And then – suddenly, unexpectedly – she steps forward and wraps her arms around him.

After a moment, he brings his arms up to slowly rest around her shoulders.  She’s so small, he thinks – her head fits neatly beneath his chin – but she’s warm, and solid, and _here._

“Thank you,” she whispers.  “For everything.”

“You’re welcome,” he replies.  And then, he says it again, because the words don’t sound like quite enough.

They stand there for a tiny eternity, neither of them willing to let go.  Dawn is an inevitability. 

&

At approximately one o’clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday, the chemist shop’s store bell rings.  A woman strides in wearing an incredibly lovely flower-print dress and an even lovelier smile.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to come talk to me on [tumblr](http://liberteegalitehomosexualite.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
